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Astronomy at Amukela. |
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| Discover the magnificent southern night sky at Amukela. | |||
| From our star deck you can view the beautiful stars and we gladly inform about the different constellations and other | |||
| interesting objects. | |||
| From our boma you enter the Mercury star deck, named after the Mercurius observatory in the Netherlands that has not | |||
| only advised us about building the star deck, but also donated a laserpen to point out the stars. | |||
| We have a 254 mm. Dobsonian telescope, complete with eyepieces and a moonfilter. | |||
| The telescope enables us to observe the moon, planets (Saturnus-Jupiter-Mars-Venus), nebulas (Orion-nebula, | |||
| Crab-nebula), galaxies and deep-sky objects. | |||
| In March 2009 we builded the stardeck at Amukela. |  |
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| It is the ideal location at our lodge to view and observe the southern night sky. | |||
| On top 4 constellations (Southern Cross, Scorpius, Leo and Orion) are depicted. | |||
| The deck has also an open view on our larger waterhole. | |||
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The Southern Cross is the most famous southern | ||
| constellation and is depicted
on several flags. |
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| This pattern in the stars has guided sailors for centuries because it can be used to find the south. | |||
| The 2 pointers who help to find the Southern Cross are not part of the constellation but belong to Centaurus. | |||
| Crux (as it is called in astronomy) is one of the smallest constellations in the sky but is located in almost the brightest | |||
| part of the Milky Way. The dark patch on one side of the Cross is called the Coal Sac and is a cloud of dust, blotting out | |||
| the stars behind it. Altough it seems to ly next to the Cross it is in fact much further away. | |||
| Our closest star is the sun. Eight planets are orbitting the sun. |  |
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| The closest to the sun is Mercury. Then comes Venus, Earth and Mars. These are the solid or inner - planets. | |||
| The outer planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus en Neptune. These are gas planets. | |||
| Pluto is no longer considered to be a planet but is now a dwarf-planet. | |||
| Mercury (on the picture left in comparison to Earth) is the smallest of the 8 planets and looks at first sight like our | |||
| moon. This planet orbits the sun in 88 days and the temperature can rise to 300 degrees Celcius. | |||
| Remarkable is that a day and night on Mercury lasts 2 Mercury years (176 Earth days). | |||
| Mercury has a very elliptical orbit so the distance to the sun varies a lot. | |||
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Jupiter is the 5th planet from the sun and the largest in our solar system with a diameter of 11 times that of the Earth. | ||
| One of the most remarkable things about Jupiter is the Great Red Spot just south of the equator. | |||
| This spot is caused by a huge anti-cycloon and excists already for more then 300 year. | |||
| The red spot has a size of 3 times the Earth! | |||
| In fact, Jupiter is a star that didn't make it; if it had more mass, then nucleair fusion would have started in the core and | |||
| it would become a star. Still Jupiter is generating more heat then it receives from the sun. | |||
| Jupiter rotates around it's own axis in only 10 hours and orbits the sun in 11,86 Earth years. | |||
| There are now 63 moons known of Jupiter and the best known are the 4 Galilean moons | |||
| (Io, Callisto, Ganymedes and Europa). | |||
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| Our own moon is at a distance of 384.000 km and rotates in 27,3 days 1 time around the Earth. | |||
| Since the moon also rotates around its own axis in 27,3 days we always see the same side of the moon. | |||
| The gravitational pull of the moon is responsible for the tides on Earth. | |||
| There is a theory that a large meteorite impact on the early Earth is responsible for the creation of the moon. | |||
| Such an impact could be responsible for the tilt of the Earth's axis. | |||
| Wether Earth and moon were once one body or not, analyses of moonrocks shows that they are about the same | |||
| age and could have been formed from the same nebula. | |||
| The gravity on the moon is very low: if you weigh 100 kilo on Earth, you only weigh 16 kilo on the moon! | |||
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| It is not so hard to take pictures of the stars. The picture on the left is taken from a tripod with a shutterspeed | |||
| of 2 hours. The movement of the stars can even be seen with a shutterspeed of a few minutes. | |||
| The dark skies of the southern hemisphere are excellent for seeing shooting stars. | |||
| In fact they are small particles that enter the Earth's atmosphere with great speed. | |||
| Heated by the friction they can be seen as a flash of light across the sky. | |||
| The most famous meteor shower is the Leonids, which can be seen in November. | |||
| Remember: nature doesn't stop at the tree tops! | |||